Three day weekend!

On Friday night our team, along with another team and some soon to be interns, attended a "Reformation workshop/dinner". To many the word reformation does not mean much, but some of you reading this know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you are smiling and some of you are cringing! My background/heritage/whatever you want to call it is the Church of Christ. Some people call it a denomination, and others will fight until they are blue in the face that it is not. That conversation might have its time, but that time is not now. What I want to share are the three points that the leader of the evening shared with us, and then a few thoughts of my own. The professor who led the evening's discussion is a reformation history guru, and he encouraged us to "be about these three things that the Church of Christ wanted to be about":
-the desire to know and be conformed to God's will
-the unity of all those striving to follow Christ
-the sharing of the good news of Jesus
I was surrounded by a lot of college kids fresh out of high school on Friday nigh, and I could sense the cynicism in the room. All some of them wanted to do was bash the people from our Church of Christ past who haven't lived up to the standards of achieving these three goals. I have a feeling I know quite a few adults who would do the same thing...come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I have done the same thing. Funny how that works! This leads to my greatest epiphany of the night: some of satan's most powerful work is being done in Christians not loving one another. We talked a little about this on Friday, and it really stuck with me. Before Jesus died he prayed that his followers would love one another so that the world would know they belonged to him. Satan probably sits back and smirks when we as Christians have more negative to say about one another than positive. If we can't get along with people who have the single greatest thing in the universe in common with us, then I can imagine people who don't yet believe in Jesus don't think they have a chance of being really loved and respected by Christians. Think about it.
Saturday I spent some time making phone calls to more of the people we sent fundraising packets out to. It's easy for me to get discouraged about calling people, because can we be honest and admit that asking for money is not the funnest thing in the world to do? I think what discourages me the most is having people show so little interest in what we're doing, which to me equates to them not caring about the people of Ipswich. Big leap, I know, but it's still how I feel. I also get bothered because even as early on as when I was a college student, I was giving money to help missionaries. It was often not much, but it was consistent, given with love, and bundled up in prayer. That's all we ask for; a few people who are willing to give a little on a consistent basis and cover it in prayer. I continue to pray for God to provide those people, and do not allow satan to discourage me.
Sunday and today were spent both cleaning up around the house and enjoying fun/spontaneous moments with my husband and dog. Back to work tomorrow, it's been a great three day weekend.